“Deka,” I said.
He started, turned, and frowned at me in surprise. “Sieh? I thought —”
I shook my head, not bothering to get up. “I have unfinished business, it seems.”
“What —” No. Deka was too smart to ask that question. I saw understanding, elation, guilt, and hope flow across his face in a span of seconds before he caught himself and put his Arameri mask in place instead. He got to his feet and came over, offering a hand to heittlp me up, which I took. When I was up, however, there was a moment of awkwardness. We were both men now, and most men would have stepped apart after such a gesture, putting distance between themselves so as to maintain the necessary boundaries of independence and camaraderie. I did not move away, and neither did Deka. Awkwardness passed into something entirely different.
“We were thinking about what to name this palace,” he said softly. “Shahar and I.”
I shrugged. “Seashell? Water?” I had never been much for creative naming. Deka, who had taste, grimaced at my suggestions.
“Shahar likes ‘Echo.’ She’ll have to run it past Mother, of course.” So fascinating, this conversation. Our mouths moved, speaking about things neither of us cared about, a verbal mask for entirely different words that did not need to be said. “She thinks this will make a good audience chamber.” Another grimace, this one more delicate.
I smiled. “You disagree?”
“It doesn’t feel like an audience chamber. It feels …” He shook his head, turning to face a spot beneath the translucent swirl-wall. I took his meaning. There was a votive atmosphere to this chamber, something difficult to define. There should have been an altar in that spot.
“So tell her,” I said.
He shrugged. “You know how it is. Shahar is still … Shahar.” He smiled, but it faded.
I nodded. I didn’t really want to talk about Shahar.
Deka’s hand brushed mine, tentative. This was something he could have played off as an accident, if I let him. “Perhaps you should bless this place. It’s a trick, of a sort, or it will be. The real home of the Arameri, leaving Sky as a decoy …”
“I can’t bless anything anymore, except in the poetic sense.” I took his hand, growing tired of the game. No semblance of just-friends anymore. “Shall I become a god again, Deka? Is that what you want?”
He flinched, thrown by my directness, his mask cracking. Through it I saw need so raw that it made me ache in sympathy. But he abandoned the game, too, because that was what the moment deserved. “No.”
I smiled. If I had still been a god, my teeth would have been sharp. “Why not? I could still love you, as a god.” I stepped closer, nuzzling his chin. He did not take this bait or the verbal bait I offered next. “Your family would love you better, if I were a god. Your god.”
Deka’s hands gripped my arms, tight. I expected him to thrust me away, but he didn’t. “I don’t care what they want,” he said, his voice suddenly low, rough. “I want an equal. I want to be your equal. When you were a god, I couldn’t be that, so … So help me, yes, some part of me wished you were mortal. It wasn’t deliberate, I didn’t know what would happen, but I don’t regret it. So Shahar’s not the only one who betrayed you.” I flinched, and his hands tightened, to the threshold of pain. He leaned closer, intent. “As a child, I was nothing to you. A game to pass the time.” When I blinked in surprise, he laughed bittert ly. “I told you, Sieh. I know everything about you.”
“Deka —” I began, but he cut me off.
“I know why you’ve never taken a mortal lover as more than a passing whim. Even before mortals were created, you’d lived so long, seen so much, that no mortal could be anything but an eyeblink in the eternity of your life. That’s if you were willing to try, and you weren’t. But I will not be nothing to you, Sieh. And if I must change the universe to have you, then so be it.” He smiled again, tight, vicious, beautiful. Terrifying.
Arameri.
“I should kill you,” I whispered.
“Do you think you could?” Unbelievable, his arrogance. Magnificent. He reminded me of Itempas.
“You sleep, Deka. You eat. Not all my tricks need magic.”
His smile grew an edge of sadness. “Do you really want to kill me?” When I didn’t answer — because I didn’t know — he sobered. “What do you want, Sieh?”
And because I was afraid, and because Yeine had asked the same question, and because Deka really did know me too well, I answered with the truth.